Bye Bye Calatrava

It’s two in the morning. Ok I am ready to sleep. I turn off the light but I cannot sleep. I keep thinking. I am in Milan. As I was two years ago. But the guy who is lying in the bed is not the same. He has changed. He has changed a lot. Not in his essence, but in the way he thinks, in the way he see life and the world. In his habits. In his friends. And my memories go through the last two years. I think about the moment I went out of the parking of Calatrava for the last time. I turned left. I miss Calatrava now. I have the clear picture of how via Augusta looked like in that moment. I should have turned right, have a trip in the city. Once more. The streets I’ve been through many times. I should have gone to the gym on Sunday. Would have been the last time. Because the last time I’ve been through those streets and to the gym and to the beach and to anywhere else, I didn’t do that with the consciousness that were the last one. Oh my god. I need to go back there, I need it. I feel something in my stomach. I want to be there. And my memory now goes back a little bit more. I went into the elevator. I pushed -3 to go to the parking. I am just one floor down and I hear Noelle calling me because I left something. I reach -3 but I push again 7 to see what I left. By the time the door opens, we are both crying. I big hug, and we both cry on each other’s shoulder. And I am crying now. Drops on my keyboard. And back again. Marco leaving the flat. Big hug, then he turns the corner of the living room. I hear “giorgiooooo” and he comes back. Another hug. It’s tough to say goodbye. It’s tough to realize that the people you’ve been living with for 2 years are going to be far from you. Not to far maybe, but won’t ever be the same. And now flows of random memories. Where is Marco saying “chicos… Photo!” when we take the elevator to go out. Where is Noelle saying “I’m fucked up for this… let’s put some music!”. Where is Huy, the most disorganized organized Vietnamese German on earth. I need him. I need Rafa drunk at our place even the day before the marketing exam. I need to hear that Matteo has just got another fine for being drunk on a moto. I need the daily habits of meeting people around, having people coming at home unexpectedly and to visit people just because I was passing by. This is all gone. I want to stay there. Ok we need to work. But I want to stay in Barcelona, with all my friends working in the same town. I want to stay in my flat, with my friends at few blocks from me. I want to wake up on Sunday morning and have pictures of the weekend to look at. I don’t want a time machine and relive these two years. I just want to continue but with everybody in the same place. And this is not possible. Everything is gone. Maybe the only thing left is Matteo drunk on a moto. I really hope he buys one here in Milan.

Dedicated to my extended calatrava family: You know I can't smile without you I can't smile without you I can't laugh and I can't sing I'm finding it hard to do anything You see I feel sad when you're sad I feel glad when you're glad If you only knew what I'm going through I just can't smile without you

Bling Blonde

What Am I doing in Barcelona in these days? Hang around, take some pictures. This one for example (in eixample).

A pure classic...

Young girls love poo

Last update was March 31st. Why? Don't know. For me writing a blog comes natural as a flow of random words out of my brain (do i have one?). And my brain is on only when under pressure, which is not the state I am in in the last month and a half. I've been traveling in spain with some of my best friends from IESE. Then graduation day and then again vacation. But i cannot stay in this state too long. That's why I asked BCG to anticipate my starting date to June 4th instead of September. I don't have money to travel as i would love to do and I am bored of asking money home. Now I don't want to force myself too much to write something so i will just post some pictures from the last weeks, starting from the spain roadtrip to the last event, Chris and Kathi's wedding!

Jumpin under the windmills in memory of Don Chichotte!

The advantage of being the taller of the group: we were 6 in the car but I was on the passenger seat!

Matteo is sleeping? Let's jump him!

A close up of Matteo on the atlantic coast between Santander and Bilbao

Salamanca, university city. Let's have some action!

You don't need a reason to jump

It didn't work out very well...

Many things to remember of this trip... among them for sure:

• Matteo Marcietta bullshitting every other sentece. Like when we entered salamanca and just by being there two minutes he made an estimate of the size of the city and the population and compared it to Piacenza. Definitely he will found the PCG (piacenza consulting group).
• Huy who booked an hotel in san sebastian and we've been looking for it for two hours ending up on the hills just to find out that the hotel he booked was not in San Sebastian (and Matteo's "logrobobos" in the middle of the phone call with the hotel, a word that in spanish does not exist at all!).
• Huy's "PERDONAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
• Saturday night at VIP Cielo of Pacha in Madrid with Diego. Back at his house at 8 in the morning and eating whatever was in the fridge, even cold meat with chocolate cookies. Suddenly, at 2pm in the middle of my best REM phase of my life, a very high tone voice woke me up yelling "A Despertarseeeeeeee!"... coplued with sheets pulled out of the bed and bulbs at full light in the room. Nice to be woken up by Diego's cute nephews!
• Diego joking about Huy "Yo no hablo espanol, yo solo chupo poja" and Huy "chupo pollo??"

Fuck i think i already forgot many of the funny things... i should have wrote this post long time ago. Shame on me. Here we go with graduation..

El trio italiano

With La Mamma and Il Papà!

I guess you know all of them

Graduation is the less funny part of the MBA, probably the one that i will remember less of these two years. It's just a ceremony where your parents discover what the hell have you been living the previous two years and have a glimps on who are this new friends with wierd names you always talk about! Then some hanging around in Barcelona with the few people that are still around in Barcelona...

Lovely Martina... Who said that models are dumb?

A nice daily trip to cadaquez, delicious village in costa brava.

An absolute must: the Dalì museum in Figueras! What a fuckin genius!

And finally here we go with the wedding, one of the most funny weekends of my life. Chris and Kathi got married in Neaudau, a small town in Austria. For most of us, this will be the next big step of our life, after the MBA. For most of us, this will be the moments when we will get together again, time for memories and hugs, laughs and tears.

Black Tie Ladies and Gentlemen

The just married couple with the IESE friends

Could a jumping pic be missing? Naaaaaaaaat

At 8 in the morning after the big party, with still lot of willingness to party!

Touching the bed at 9am and waking up at 11 can be a tough experience

How to forget people having 4 beers before the ceremony, being two days in a row hungover as part of the wedding celebrations, Francis going to bed at 9, and waking up 2 hours later still with the tux and cufflings on! Not to mention the trip into the fetish shop in Wien when i learnt that Oh-De Toilette can be a movie and that Young Girls Love Poo! Francis: "Hey we have been to a fetish shop this afternoon on our way back from the wedding!" Alexandre:"Already?" Ian:"Did you mean 'Oh really' or 'Already'?" A friend of Francis in a motel (with tiny walls), hears some voices from the room next to his Man voice (angry tone): "Where is it!!!?" Man voice (again): "Where is it!!!?" Tiny lady voice: "It's in my ass" Man voice: "You're damn right, it is!"

Out of Club Med

Our two year vacation is finished. Sad to say, the MBA is over. After 19 months of hard studying and partying we are going to move out of this Club Med vacation disguised as a serious thing. Let's jump in the library! To celebrate the last day of class and my birthday (which is actually in two days but who cares?) we had another calatrava roof-terrace party. Unfortunately I don't have any picture yet but i will post them as soon as possible! I think i need them also to remember what happened. Still i feel like a red fish swimming in a bowl of gin! Joder!

Copenhagen

I knew it would have been an amazing dinner since the beginning... when Huy, who was trying to figure out if it was feasible to share a cab, asked Marco:

"Marco, how do we get to the airport?" answer...
"drunk!"

Valerio, Marco, Matteo, Huy and I decided to spend one weekend in another city. Copenhagen was the place nobody have visisted before. It turned to be an amazing weekend. One of those that afterwards makes you share a common intent: "we should do this at least once a year for the rest of our lives!"

The city itself was amazing even though to be honest we have been out in daylight only 6 hours in three days. But for the time we have been walking around the weather was amazing. Chilly but absolutely sunny. People there is not used to sun, so as soon as it comes out you see short skirts, flip flops and open cabriolets everywhere! Not to say we were more interested in the first two. Obviously the best memories come from the nightlife. Through some contacts in smallworld Huy managed to let us into two great clubs. I never saw so many blond girls in a club. Not even at the Billionaire in the opening night in July! Amazing. Matteo decided that he wants to be buried on the danceflor of Luux, one of these clubs! Ok now it's time to give grades.. so let's move to the..

The grades report

Huy Grade: 2. He starts the weekend with some horrible sunglasses but immediately suprises everyone with a contact through smallworld that will change our trip. Few phone calls and we are in guest list for the best club in town. Would have been a 10 if he didn't wake me up at 7.30 in the morning saying "Hey, it's already 10 and we have to go out of the room in 10 minutes". Would have been 6 if he didn't make me pay a drink betting with me when i was already half drunk. Would have been a 5 if he didn't ask me to limit my creativity and my prose in the name of our friendship. But he's right, friends might be lost, prose and creativity are always there. But still.. take your 2 motherfucker! :) Incrediball.

Marco Grade: 7. He is always the best. At the airport he arrives with two big bags while i was just a handbag. Three pairs of shoes, a suit and an uncountable number of shirts. That's a strategic approach for the vacation. He takes everything with a structured approach that at the ends pays good results. If he didn't hit on any girls was just because he is a good friend and turned his attention only to us. The only moment in which he was lost was in Christiania. Those dogs might bite more than any private equity partner. Method man.

Me Grade: 6. Disorganized as I am i was in charge of booking flights and hotel. We arrived in Copenhagen and i didn't even know the name of the hotel. Very good. But relax guys, at the end everything went well. I tried to teach them how to walk as a whealty people but they just thought it was funny. And indeed it was. I love my friends. That's why I gave up on that blonde beauty at Da Vinci to have fun with them at Luux! But maybe is because I have only one blondie on my mind right now.. Misunderstood.

Valerio Grade 8. He arrived in Copenhagen already sick. Sorethroat, closed ear and headache. He left the city in an even worse condition. But of course when he saw a couple of big tits at NASA everything was fine. But he's going to meet his Super Duck in New York in one week so loyalty to the gf was more than due. He drunk like hell but still at the restaurant he was ordering food without chees because it's not healty. We will miss him.

Teo Grade 10. Always drunk. Always walking around with eyes like a radar and chest pushed outside. Whatever happens for him is ok. No complains. The picture shows the typical face expression of matteo in copenhagen. Amazed by the blondies he decided that he could have died at any moment. And he wanted to be buried on the danceflor of Luux. Killed by the pussy.

Now i'm back home with a pile of things to do for tomorrow. The last week of the MBA is ahead of me. How sad! Two presentations for tomorrow to close DISER and Corporate Strategy, three cases for last sessions of Globalization & Strategy. I can't believe.. the last three cases of my life. Well.. life is a case.

Global Warming, Local Partying!

Today I just closed my DIPLO course with a speech about global warming, about how bad it is to have pollution that destroys the plane we live in.

But i didn't believe in what i said. I love global warming. Global warming means, in March, local partying. Starting from BBQs everyday on our terrace! That's the way it goes at the end of the second year.

The usual suspects get shit faced even on a relaxed sunday afternoon! Yummy foooooood! Here we gooo! Group action! Chris and Therese, the only first year who was partying the weekend before the exams! I love her!

Now it's 5.30 and i'm going to the airport to carch a flight to Copenhagen. Time to cool down at 5 degrees after being sunburned in barcelona for almost a month. See you in a few days!

MBAs @ Dinner

Last night we had the "Graduation 2007" dinner. Some 400 people from our year were supposed to attend this dinner organized just before the end of classes. A sort of unofficial farewell dinner which at the end was attended probably by only half of the students.

The dinner was organized with the "buffet" formula... which many MBA students wrongly thought has something to do with the mighy investor of Berkshire Hathaway. That's probably why 200 people came and also why other 200 didn't. The dining room was organized in two areas. The area where long tables were used to put serving dishes, and an area with small tables where people were supposed to sit after taking a plate of food. Well.. this 200 hungry and thirsty MBAs crowded this restaurant when no food was on the tables yet.

That's the way it was supposed to be. But then it came food. And unfortunately, at 9.30, starving MBAs have no more friends, no more rules, no more ethics between them and the food. But you may think "They are still MBAs. Second years. Future managers..". Absolutely... and that's why all the weapons learned in Operations Management were used in order to get the highest amount of food.

• Veritcal Integration (at the bottom): people understood the efficiency of sitting directly at the delivery tables. Reduced lead time, decrease in inventory levels, reduced risk of traveling in the room.
• Increase Capacity : people understood that instead of using the small plates (some 18 cm diameter), it was much better to steal from the kitchen the big ones used as buffet-trays (some 30cm diameter). Doing that, with just one round at the delivery tables you could take food for the whole evening. Brilliant.
• Lean Production Process : The innovators that increased capacity didn't consider the fact that food was not always the same. Extra capacity is good for volumes, but decreases flexibility. Innovator weren't late to come even in this. People got rid of the plates. They started using the forks to eat straight from the delivery trays. Amazing
• Vertical Integration 2 (at the top): instead of sitting at the delivery table, some visionairs started to sit at the kitchen desk, where waiters were supposed to get the delivery trays and take them do the delivery tables. This is very smart!

All this made me think about what i learned in my "globalization & strategy" class about how cultural differencies and problems of adaptation play an importan role when entering new markets. I think I ate probably 20 grams of food in the whole eveining. I studied operations. I know about lean production. But still i cannot go to a buffet and sit at the delivery table. Or use my fork to take food straight from a tray. Reputation is an issue, good manners are a must.
But probably it's just a question of cultural difference and there is nobody to blame about this.

15 seconds are not enough

I always thought that fifteen seconds of popularity were not enough. So i played some small part as an actor in ads when i was a kid. But then my parents told that there were better ways to be popular that passed through study and hard working. So I went to the college, the university and the MBA. But none of them brought me fame and glory. I also made myself ridiculous taking videos (or "wideos" as Marco would say) with Noelle and posting them to youtube. No success either. So I decided to go back to my roots. And here I am, screened for Ray Ban in Times Square. And I also thought that success is not as such if is not shared with someone else..